FORMER SNP leadership candidate and Alba MSP Ash Regan is facing a two-day ban from the Scottish parliament.
The punishment for the now-independent MSP was proposed by Holyrood’s Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments (SPPA) Committee at a hearing on Thursday and relates to her public accusations of misconduct against Green MSP Maggie Chapman.
Following the Supreme Court’s ruling on the meaning of sex in the Equality Act in April, Chapman addressed a rally in Aberdeen where she denounced the decision. “We say ‘not in our name’ to the bigotry, prejudice and hatred that we see coming from the Supreme Court,” the Green MSP said.
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Regan then wrote to the Presiding Officer asking if Chapman had breached the code of conduct, and published that letter online.
Sharing it on social media, she wrote: “I’ve formally reported Maggie Chapman MSP to the Presiding Officer and Standards Committee following her dangerous dismissal of the Supreme Court’s ruling on the Equality Act as a ‘political attack’. MSPs have a duty to uphold the law, not undermine it.”
However, paragraph 9.1 of the MSP code says that parliamentarians “must not disclose, communicate or discuss any complaint or intention to make a complaint to or with members of the press or other media prior to the lodging of the complaint”.
The SPPA committee unanimously ruled that Regan had breached this rule.
In her defence, the MSP argued that she had not actually made a complaint against Chapman and had never intended to.
However, Labour MSP Martin Whitfield (above), the SPPA committee convener, said that they were “not persuaded” by the argument.
Whitfield added: “The committee considers that any objective reading of the letter, covering emails and social media post, would be that there was, at the very least, an intention to make a complaint about the conduct of Maggie Chapman MSP.”
He went on: “The committee has concluded that the breach of the code of conduct in this instance was sufficiently serious to merit the recommendation of a sanction …
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“On the basis of the facts and circumstances of this case, the committee determined that the most appropriate sanction available to it was exclusion from the proceedings of the Parliament for a specified period of time.
“I propose that the appropriate sanction in this case would be exclusion from meetings of the Parliament and its committees on two sitting days, with those days being a Wednesday and a Thursday.”
For the two-day ban to take effect, it will have to be confirmed by a full vote of parliament.
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